Sunday's highly anticipated Game of Thrones premiere garnered a record 4.4. million Total Viewers, an increase of 13 percent over the season two premiere (3.9 million). The premiere was up 4 percent from the series' previous viewership high of 4.2 million for the Season 2 finale. A total of 6.7 million viewers watched one of HBO's three telecasts of the premiere on Sunday night. More details can be found on Deadline.

Series high on a night with so much going on is pretty impressive. I’m sure the (awful) Walking Dead finale ate into its ratings a bit, as did the finale for The Bible (it was Easter, after all). I don’t know that Shameless, or the other Showtime series airing last night really made much of an impact, but I’d wager that we can expect higher numbers for the next episode of the season.

Norma

Awesome even against TWD season finale!

hello

Renewal today or tomorrow?

SarahL

Good for GOT!

Cody

I wonder what the HBO Go numbers are since it was down for many people last night.

IceCreamSeller89

Big let down. Even with the competition I thought it would have hit 5 million easily. That said, the premiere wasn’t really much fun anyway. Felt like more of the same.

KS

I liked the episode and this episode looks promising.

Richard Steven Hack

GoT was pretty good considering I’d forgotten most of the previous events. They managed to recap everything nicely. Not a lot of action. Ciaran Hinds was a nice addition.

Jenna

Great numbers, although I thought there would be a bigger increase in overall viewership with the repeat airings. I figured a lot of people might watch TWD at 9 and the GOT repeat at 10.

rob60990

Girls can only dream of getting these ratings.

KS

EDIT: I liked the episode and this season looks promising. Vast improvement over terrible season 2 but still season 1’s best IMO.

Ron

ROFLMA HAHAHA…more like Game of Flops! or Flop of Thrones!

(and yes I’m just being a wiseass in response to certain others on this site)

PurpleDrazi

I understand that paid cable is different from broadcast TV and I get that these are great numbers for HBO.

However, I don’t understand all this talk about GoT being such big competition. It got 4.4 million viewes. A rerun of Elementar got more than that and a rerun of Dateline got really close. If you are looking for something to blame for lower ratings last night I’m not sure GoT is where you should point your finger.

John A

Hope we see TWD numbers today.

Alan

@Ron It’s actually pretty good for a HBO show.

Layton

4.4 is huge for an HBO show only behind True Blood and I wouldn’t be surprised if the season finale of GOT is ahead of the True Blood season premier.

Jack

The 6.7 million is what really matters to HBO. The HBO GO number will push it above 8 million.